Dairy farmers, sheep and beef farmers, a free-range chook farmer, a beekeeper and lifestylers have all worked together to clean up their river after it was declared unsafe for swimming in 2001. They’ve gained more than one award along the way for their work and the latest is a River Story Award at the Morgan Foundation’s inaugural New Zealand River Awards.
In summer, the Sherry can become little more than a stream as it weaves from steep forested hills along the valley floor and into the Wangapeka River that then meets the larger Motueka River. Despite its small size, it has had huge support from the community that was galvanised into action when they learnt their river had high bacterial levels.
When a ‘cows in creeks’ study on one of the dairy farms revealed cows were 50 times more likely to defecate in water than elsewhere on the raceway, dairy farmers responded by bridging the river wherever cows crossed and that reduced the bacterial contamination in the river by 50%.
It was a major improvement, but the river was still not suitable for swimming and more needed to be done. Between NZ Landcare Trust and the Motueka Integrated Catchment Management Programme, meetings were organised to bring the community together and the Sherry River Catchment Group was formed, with researchers and other agencies working alongside to reach its goal of making the river suitable for swimming again.
It’s an ongoing project – not just fencing and planting the river and streams leading into it, but also the maintenance of those areas with pests such as old man’s beard threatening their efforts.
In the early days, money from the Sustainable Farming Fund enabled the group to develop Landowner Environmental Plans and best management practice for the area. Riparian planting got underway, with the Tasman District Council initially covering the cost of fencing and plants while the community got together and planted the river’s banks with a range of natives. Even the local Tapawera Area School gathered local seed, grew plants and dug them into the ground.
Sheep and beef farmers put in water systems to keep stock out of creeks and while the river is now entirely fenced off, the work continues on side streams and wet areas, with planting an ongoing job and maintenance of planted areas continuing for years. And it’s that continuing persistence and ability to work collaboratively with the science community that has provided knowledge to the wider industry.
Landcare Research catchment scientist Andrew Fenemor has worked with the group from the beginning and he attributes its ongoing commitment and success to that sense of community that prevails in the valley.
“The size of the valley and the size of the landowners has helped to make it work. And an element of peer pressure helps.
“When there’s lots of either absentee landowners or corporate farms, you don’t see such a commitment – people move on. The state of the environment is a long-term goal and in the Sherry Valley, people want to be there for generations. And having a focus like water quality has helped to build the community. I think that’s really important.”
A questionnaire to the group asked them what motivated them most to continue working on the water quality project and a common answer was the need for someone to be taking an interest in what they were doing.
Phil and Jocelyn Riley are dairy farmers in the valley who farm for about 15km of river frontage along the Sherry River and Wangapeka River, with 1150 cows on one farm and 800 cows on another they farm in an equity partnership with Steve and Kerry Semmens.
Eleven years ago, planting riparian waterways was still reasonably experimental, so it’s been a learning curve for the Sherry River community. In one 50m section, the Rileys were left with one remaining flax after rabbits and hares destroyed the rest of the plants.
Other areas have needed to be refenced more than once after floods and then there’s the maintenance for several years before plants get established.
“The easy part is planting it,” Phil said. He now uses a contractor to continue with the planting and maintenance of those young plants along the creeks that run into the Sherry. In their latest planting, the contractor sprayed the grass and planted 1200 plants along an 800m strip at a cost of $10,000, with a further $4500 for the plants and plastic protectors. A couple of months after planting, the contractor returns to release the small plants from weeds.
“Now that we have professional help, I think we can make a bit more headway.”
On the other side of the Sherry, sheep and beef farmers Jeanette and Bill Booth say most landowners could not have done the work to date, or the ongoing maintenance, without help and that’s where the community input has made it successful.
“It can’t just be on one person,” Jeanette said. “If it was left to us to do our area it would be too much.”
Instead, they’ve had working bees with 15 to 20 people turning up with linetrimmers or digging holes for plants in fenced areas that stretch to 30m from the river when there’s sloping terrain.
The community has always had a friendly bond which has been helped by living on no-exit roads, with the head of the valley leading to the Wangapeka Track in the Kahurangi National Park.
“This is a community that talks to people a lot and farmers in this valley have been around for a reasonable length of time,” she said.
“You didn’t have to bound on to the Sherry River to be involved – the Sherry River belonged to everyone.”
Whether landowners bordered the river or not, Bill said they all had creeks that threaded their way through paddocks to join the Sherry anyway, so everyone had a stake in the quality of its water.
They’ve trialled various methods to get plants established – blanket sprayed, burnt blackberry and sown grass seed that would eventually collapse to form a mat. Their usual practice has been to release spray the plants a couple of times when they are young and later release the plants by hand over a five-year period. The problem with old man’s beard is that it can completely cover reasonable-sized plants within months of being hand clipped with secateurs, a laborious task as Bill has discovered.
“You’ve got to have someone who prods you along,” he said.
That someone has been Barbara Stuart from NZ Landcare Trust, who organised the working bees and rewarded the landowners along the way with Sherry Champion awards for their efforts. Their success was recognised again at an end-of-project dinner in 2010 with the unveiling of a story board to erect beside the river.
Celebrating success encouraged the group to continue working toward its goal with a positive attitude and this has been highlighted by researchers as vitally important for other groups working on similar projects.
The group’s biggest gains in water quality were made in the first four to five years and a big part of that was the bridges, Bill said. He’s been involved in the monthly water monitoring since the funding for the project ended and believes the quality continues to fluctuate and the community has yet to reach its water quality goal. Clay soils don’t absorb the rain and Bill said much of it runs down the hills and into the creeks and rivers.
“We haven’t made as much gain in the last couple of years and the plantings will have to become a bit more established before they have a big effect.”
Jeanette said the community has invested so much effort in their river that they can’t sit back now when there’s still work to do.
Back at the Rileys’ property, the couple intend spending between $10,000 and $20,000 a year on riparian planting and maintenance, depending on the payout. It’s now simply another farm cost to put in the budget each year, Phil said.
He believes dairy farmers around the country will increasingly use contractors to make the best use of their money tagged for protecting the environment.
“I think there’s going to be quite an opening for nurseries to grow the plants, plant them and get contractors to manage them.”
Being involved with the community project for so long has made it easy for the Rileys to meet Fonterra’s water accord requirements and they have their own farm environmental plan to take it even further.
“We come in for a lot of bad press as dairy farmers, but I think people generally want to have the rivers in a state where their kids can swim in them.”
Communities caring for rivers
The New Zealand River Stories are chosen by the Morgan Foundation as examples of committed community groups working to protect and restore rivers and streams.
For the inaugural awards it sought groups that stood out in terms of ongoing commitment, the application of science to their work, the extent of their collaboration with others, the obstacles they overcame and their achievement.
Two groups received the awards last year, the Sherry River Catchment Community and the Silverstream Care Group.
Nine out of 16 regions received awards for significant improvement in long-term E.coli levels, including Otara Creek in Auckland, Ngongotaha Stream in Bay of Plenty, Watercress Creek in Tasman, Oraka Stream in Waikato, Oroua River in Manawatu, Rai River in Marlborough, Mataura River in Southland, Harris in West Coast and Shag River in Otago.
The major award went to Shag River in Otago which showed the biggest annual improvement of all rivers with a 13.1% improvement in E.coli levels. From being almost dead in 1999 following a severe drought, the river has become a good trout fishing river.
